Big Brother Watch has joined with parliamentarian Baroness Jenny Jones to urge Home Secretary Sajid Javid and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to stop the police’s use of the “dangerously authoritarian” surveillance technology.

The Met has targeted Notting Hill Carnival twice as well as Remembrance Sunday with the China-style surveillance cameras, which Big Brother Watch describes as a “lawless growth of Orwellian surveillance”.

Police have been deploying facial recognition technology with secret watch lists containing not only people wanted for arrest but also protesters, football fans and innocent people with mental health problems.

Big Brother Watch and Baroness Jones have vowed to take the force to court with public support raised on the crowdfunding site Crowdjustice if the Met continues to use the surveillance tool.

Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, said:

“The lawless growth of this Orwellian surveillance technology must be stopped. Facial recognition cameras are dangerously authoritarian, hopelessly inaccurate, and risk turning members of the public into walking ID cards.

The UK already has the most extensive CCTV of any democracy in the West. The prospect of facial recognition turning those CCTV cameras into identity checkpoints like China is utterly terrifying. The police’s use of facial recognition will make the UK a less free place to live and Big Brother Watch will fight every step of the way to stop it.”

Baroness Jones said:

“I’m extremely concerned about the impact that the Met police’s use of automated facial recognition will have on my ability to carry out my democratic functions.

As part of my parliamentary work I attend public events and demonstrations, meeting whistleblowers and campaigners who may not be able to meet me if police surveil events with facial recognition. In fact, anyone could be monitored, identified and tracked by the police using real-time facial recognition cameras.

Police use of this technology has no legal basis, and infringes people’s rights and civil liberties. That’s why I’m challenging the Met to end its use, now.”

Anna Dews from the human rights team at law firm Leigh Day who is representing Big Brother Watch and Baroness Jones, said:

“Our clients believe that the police use of this AFR technology violates articles 8, 10 and 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights. They have written to the Commissioner and the Home Secretary seeking immediate action. Absent a satisfactory response, they may have no option but to seek the court’s intervention in this matter.

The lack of a statutory regime or code of practice regulating this technology, the uncertainty as to when and where automated facial recognition can be used, the absence of public information and rights of review, and the use of custody images unlawfully held, all indicate that the use of automated facial recognition, and the retention of data as a result, is unlawful and must be stopped as a matter of priority.”